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The Story of Silk &^ Cheney Silks 



STHE STORY OF 
SILK C8i> CHENEY 
SILKS e^^S^^ 

By H. H. c^MANCHESTER, A. B. 

cTWanaging Editor, *^The Library of Original Sources" 




CHENEY BROTHERS 

SILK cTWANUFACTURERS 

Factories: South cTVIanchester, Connecticut 
Sales Offices: Fourth Ave. ca, 18th St., New York 






Copyright 1916, by 
CHENEY BROTHERS 



. lfc^/7770 



JUN 15 1916 
?)CI,A433824 



^ The First Silk Culture 




THE STORY OF SILK CS, CHENEY SILKS 

THE FIRST SILK CULTURE 



s ^^^1 








t Z^} 





Mediaeval Chir 



Killing Cocoons by 
Steaming 



CHINESE myths date the culture of silk back to 2640 
B. C, almost 3,200 years before its nature was 
understood in Europe. 

One of the three emperors to whom the Chinese 
ascribe the beginning of their ancient customs was 
Huang-Ti, who is said to have invented the making of 
garments, which possibly means an improvement in 
weaving. He instructed his Empress, Si-Ling-Chi, to 
experiment with the wild silk worms, which lived on the 
mulberry trees, to see if they could be raised by the 
people. 

Whether the silk in their cocoons had previously 
been, like linen or wool, not reeled, but spun, and then 
made into cloth, is not stated, but seems probable. The Empress collected 
a large number of the worms from the mulberry trees, learned how to 
feed and raise them, and what is much more important, how to reel or 
unwind the silk filaments from their cocoons. 

While this account is only a legend, it emphasizes the 
fact that silk culture was known in China from time 
immemorial. A number of notices concerning it in the oldest Chinese 
books confirm this statement. Confucius, for example, about 500 B. C, 
noted that the emperor and his vassals maintained, near a brook, a gov- 
ernment nursery for mulberry trees and silk worms. It was then the 
custom for lots to be drawn by the ladies of the three palaces, and for the 
lucky ones thus chosen to be sent to the nursery to care for the worms. 

7 



Earliest Records of 
Silk Culture 



THE STORY OF SILK 

In the last spring month the young empress was wont to purify 
herself and offer a sacrifice to the goddess of the silk worms. She 
herself would go to the fields and gather mulberry leaves. The raising of 
the silk worms was so important that at this season she would dispense 
with the waiting women who sewed and embroidered for her, and forbid 
similar work for the noble ladies and ministers' wives in order that all 
might give their attention to the culture of the worms. As this suggests, 
the silk industry in ancient China was considered so vital to the prosperity 
of the people as to be interconnected with various religious rites. 

From a compilation made by the Chinese government 
of the early notices and rules in regard to silk culture, it 
is possible to get a very j^ood idea of the methods they 
employed even in the earliest, as well as mediaeval, times. There are 

also several paintings on antique 
porcelains and a number of quaint 
wood cuts by ancient Chinese 
artists, which serve to visualise the 
industry and give something of its 
atmosphere as it existed in those far 
off days. Low-Show, for example, 
in 1210 produced a whole series of 
46 wood cuts showing the processes 
of agriculture and silk culture which 
had already been in use from time 

Ancient China— Gathering Mulberrj' Leaves immemorial 

The Ancient ^^^ industry naturally fell into the great divisions of 

Chinese Industry raising the mulberry trees, producing cocoons, reeling, and 
weaving the silk. 

The Mulberry Tree ^* ^^^ ^^^^^ recognized that there were two great 
species of mulberry trees, — the loo, or large mulberry, 
which was common in the north, and the king, or dwarf mulberry, which 
was native to the south. The king was more hardy, but the loo had 
larger and more abundant leaves. For this reason the Chinese early 
learned to graft a slip from the large on to one from the dwarf mulberry, 
and to raise the trees from such slips, with the dwarf one furnishing the 
root. Oil cakes and decayed fish were used for fertilizer. As the tree 
grew it was carefully pruned by cutting off the central branches, so as to 
make it spread and increase the foliage. 




THE STORY OF SILK 
„ . . ,. „.„ The briefest outline of the ancient Chinese rules for 

Raising the bilkwortn .,, .,, , 

the raising of the silk worm will suggest what 
patient, painstaking care the industry demanded. 

Care of the E s ^^ *^^ spring the eggs, when the moths were through 
laying them on sheets of paper which had been supplied 
for the purpose, were hung up until dried. The sheets were then sprin- 
kled with ashes, rolled up and deposited for the summer in a cool place 
away from damp or smoke. At the beginning of autumn, the ashes were 
removed. In the middle of January the eggs were soaked for a quarter 
of an hour in cool juice steeped from mulberry leaves, and perhaps salt. 
When dry they were again rolled up and laid away. 
Hatch' "'"^ *^^ beginning of April, or as soon as the leaves began to 

sprout on the mulberry trees, the sheets of eggs were bathed in 
pure water for a quarter of an hour and spread out in an airy place until 
dry. They were then wrapped in paper and covered with cotton or 
blankets to receive warmth enough to hatch them. They were some- 
times given the warmth required for hatching by being carried next the 
breast. In seven days the silk raiser examined the eggs, and, if they had 
begun to change from slaty gray to pea green, watched them carefully for 
the coming of the worms. If a few came out before the others, such gal- 
loping worms, as they were called, were brushed off as useless, because it 
was considered very important to have the whole culture the same age. 
When even a third were hatched, they were still wrapped up in paper as 
before. But the next day the sheets were taken out and spread in a warm 
spot so as to make the rest of the eggs all hatch together. If some did 
not do so, they were either kept separate or thrown away. 

When the grubs were out, shredded mulberry leaves were sprinkled 
over them, and as they clung they were delicately removed by silk-worm 
nippers to the place selected. The fingers could not be used, and even goose 
feathers were considered too harsh for handling the worms at this stage. 
Wei hine '^^^ cards were weighed with the newly hatched grubs on them, 

and alone after their removal, so th^t the exact weight of the 
grubs could be noted. For every ounce of grubs, the warning was given 
that the worms, before they spun their cocoons, would require 20 peculs, 
or 2,660 pounds of mulberry leaves, and it was estimated that they should 
produce from 150 to 160 ounces of silk. 

Raising the Worms ^^^ "^°^^ minute attention was paid to raising the 

worms. In the course of their life, until they begin to 

spin their cocoons, the worms change their skin four times, or in the case 

of some species, only three times, each change being preceded by a period 

9 



THE STORY OF SILK 

of torpor. For each stage the Chinese had directions for care far too 
detailed to be repeated. 

The worms were said to love quiet and abhor noise; to love cleanli- 
ness and abhor dirt; to like warmth and dryness, but to hate dampness, 
and live without drinking ; to hate smoke, wine or vinegar, smells of musk 
or grease, and mourning women. 

It was essential, not 
only to have the eggs 
hatched together as de- 
scribed, but for the worms 
to go into each torpor to- 
gether and to begin to spin 
their cocoons together. 
Feeding The feeding was 
in care of the 
women, the chief of whom 
was called the matron of 
the worms. The worms 
were fed five or six times 
a day with finely chopped 
mulberry leaves. It was 
directed that the hands 
should be washed before 
each feeding, and that 
while feeding, the worn s should be placed inside a curtain to keep out 
the wind and cold. 

The temperature was kept as even as possible by little 
charcoal fires. If too cold, the worms would be too slow, 
if too hot, they would dry and shrivel. But if the room were heated too 
suddenly, the yellow sickness would develop. If the room were cooled too 
suddenly, the worms would become white and die. Damp leaves for 
feeding would make them white, while hot ones would make their heads 
too large and they would not develop into cocoons. 

The trays were cleaned every day of all refuse. This in itself re- 
quired the most delicate handling of the worms. Leaves were spread 
over them, and when the worms clung to them they were placed on 
another tray. After the third or fourth torpor they were removed, during 
cleaning, by means of a silkworm net to which they would cling. When 
the worms began to look bright yellow, it signified that a period of torpor 
was approaching. The first one usually took place in six days after hatch- 




Ancient China — Feeding the Young Worms 



Care of the Worms 



THE STORY OF SILK 

ing. In order to make all molt at once, the food was diminished in pro- 
portion to the number that were yellow. Those not falling to sleep were 
rejected. The first worms to cast off their skins were allowed to remain 
without eating until all had molted. After that they were fed systemat- 
ically again. They now increased in size daily, and had to be placed farther 
apart after each cleaning. The worms were thus raised through four 

torpors, during which 

they each increased in 
size from a quarter of an 
inch to ZYz inches in 
length, A batch which at 
hatching would be no 
larger over than a check- 
er, after the first molting 
would require two trays, 
and after the fourth 
twenty trays, their 
weight being multiplied 
probably 5,00Q times. 
After the fourth tor- 
por the worms were fed 
all they could eat, in 
order to increase the 

flow of silk. 

f 
S inning the ^^^^ ready to spin their cocoons, the worms would stop eat- 
Cocoons ing, raise their heads, and evince a desire to climb. They were 
then placed upon a spinning trellis constructed of bamboo and 
rushes, with branches of rice straw to hold the cocoons. From the first 
hatching to the spinning required about thirty days. When the worm 
was placed on the trellis for spinning, it would discharge two silk filaments 
in the form of a gummy liquid from two minute tubes in its lower jaw, 
fastening these filaments to a number of straws. On being exposed to the 
air they would at once harden and act as supports for the cocoon. The 
worm would then double itself on its back, almost like a horseshoe, with 
its legs on the outside, and, emitting the filament from its tubes, wind it 
round and round its body with rapid circles of its head. 

Modern estimates are that its head describes about one ellipse a 
second, and some 300,000 in making the cocoon. 

On the fourth day all the silk would be expended, and the worm 




Ancient China — Preserving Cocoons by Salting Down 
in Clay-Stopped Jars 



THE STORY OF SILK 




within the cocoon would be- 
come a dull white, its ten hind 
legs would wither, the six fore 
legs would draw together and 
become black, the skin would 
wrinkle and be pushed down 
toward the end, and the 
chrysalis would appear between 
the rents of the skin. 
^. . -, . The chrys- 

Changtng to a Moth ., , , 

alls would 
at first be white, but later turn 
to a brownish red. If not inter- 
fered with, it would remain in 
the pupa state from fifteen to 
seventeen days, then change to 
a moth and break through the 
cocoon. The moths would 
mate immediately, and in the 
course of the next three days 
the female would lay some 350 eggs on a sheet of paper already arranged 
for her. The eggs at first would be yellow, then brown, and finally turn 
gray. The moths would live only ten or twelve days and eat nothing. 
D • xt /^ The Chinese discovered, however, that in order to 

freservmg the Cocoons ' 

reel the silk it was necessary to do so before the 
cocoon was pierced by the chrysalis, as this fractured the threads. Hence, 
only a few of the best cocoons were left for breeding. 

From two to five days after the spinning, they would take down the 
cocoons for reeling, and either reel them at once or preserve them by 
killing the chrysalis. A very early method of doing this was by salting 
them down in air-tight earthen jars. Another was to kill the chrysalides 
by exposing the cocoons in the hot sunshine, but the results of this were 
more uncertain. A somewhat later method was to steam the cocoons 
over hot water and afterward dry them before putting away until used. 

The invention of a method of preserving the cocoons for future reel- 
ing was very important, as it was absolutely impossible to carry on the 
slow process of unwinding the silk from them as fast as they were spun 
by the worms, or before they were spoiled for reeling by the moths 
breaking through them. 



Reeling the Silk from 
the Cocoons 



THE STORY OF SILK 
The ancient Chinese method of reeling required the 



utmost patience and was inexpressibly tedious. 
A little furnace was built of bricks and clay, and 
heated with charcoal or dried dung. Over the furnace the cocoons were 
placed in a pan of hot water. If the water were too hot the cocoons rose 
to the surface, if it were too cold they sank to the bottom. 

The reeler then stirred the cocoons and searched for the loose ends 
that had been fastened to the spinning trellis. When these were found, 
he jerked off the coarse threads on the outside of the cocoon, disclosing 
the fine silk below. This was the part he sought for reeling. 

The filament of one cocoon was much too fine to reel. It was 
discovered that several filaments from as many cocoons could be joined 
together and reeled at the same time. This not only gave a much stronger 
thread, but reduced the labor in proportion to the number that were 
handled at once. 

In unwinding several cocoons at a time, the filaments were joined by 
being drawn through small holes or eyes, their natural gumminess when 
they first came out of the water causing these filaments to adhere as soon 
as they came in contact. The thread was then drawn over spools, and 
wound upon the reel. This was at first turned by hand, but later by 
foot power. The thread had to be kept 
a regular thickness by adding a filament 
for each one that was exhausted, which 
was indicated by the chrysalis being 
drawn to the surface of the water. If 
the filament broke, another was added to 
take its place. During the reeling the 
hot water for the cocoons was frequently 
changed, a third at a time. Each cocoon 
would furnish from 400 to 600 yards of 
filament, besides the coarse threads dis- 
carded in the beginning and a portion at 
the end too fine to pay for reeling. 

The process of reeling not only 
demanded the greatest care, but was 
very ineffective. Working from day- 
light till dark, the ancient Chinese reeler 
could reel only from one to two pounds 
of thread a week. 

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THE STORY 


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See page 15 



The ' irliest Picture of ^Veaving and Spinning 



S in in Slk ^^^^^^^ thus reeling silk, the Chinese, even in ancient times, 
used to spin silk, — in fact, this was probably the original 
method of utilizing it, though it fell into comparative disuse for silk 
after reeling was perfected. The distinction between spinning and reeling 
is absolute. Reeling is simply unwinding the silk from the cocoons which 
the silkwr "ms have already spun. In making spun silk, the shorter fibres 
combed out from the tangled or broken silk made in reeling the pierced 
cocoons and what other silk cannot be reeled or would otherwise be 
wasted, is twisted or spun into thread just as cotton or wool is spun. 

The cocoons from the wild silkworms for this purpose were 
hunted for in the trees where they abounded. Some of them could be 
reeled, but many of them had to be spun, either because already pierced 
or too tangled for reeling. 

The earliest method of spinning was to draw out with the hand a few 
filaments from the mass, and, having fastened the end on a round or pear 
shaped piece of heavy wood or stone, to keep whirling this spindle in 
order to twist the filaments, as fast as supplied, into a thread, 
o . ^ „, . To prepare either the reeled or spun silk 

Preparing for Weaving . ^ ^ . . •■,-,,, 

for weavmg, it was twisted, doubled, and 
then twisted again as many times as necessary to give the desired 



THE STORY OF SILK 



weight. In early days 
this was all done by 
hand, — the thread being 
run off from the reel 
into skeins and upon 
spools. As already men- 
tioned, the raw silk was 
very gummy, but just 
how much of this gum 
was in ancient times ab- 
stracted before spinning, 
twisting, weaving, or 
dyeing, it is impossible 
to state. 

The earliest 
method of 




Weaving 



China, A.D. 1210— Winding Spools 



weaving was almost as crude as was spinning. The threads to form the 
warp were stretched between the two ends of a frame which were as 
wide as the cloth was to be. For the simplest texture the threads for the 
weft or woof were drawn alternately in and out /etween those of the warp. 
This was at first done solely by hand, with the warp threads fastened to 
a large needle or rod with a hook at the end. Ancient pictures show that 
two rods were used, which were run between the alternate threads of the 
warp, to hold it in place. When the woof was run through, it was pressed 
against the woven portion with another rod. 

Whether this was the crude loom accredited in the Ch lese legend 
to Huang-Ti or not is, of course, uncertain, but such a loom, together 
with the hand spinning already described, appears in Egyptian pictures 
as early as 3000 B. C, where it was used especially for linen, silk being 
then unknown in Egypt. 

The Chinese had already in ancient times taken the next great step 
in the development of the loom, which was to run the threads of the warp 
through eyes which v/ere joined to rods, so that when one rod or heddle 
was lowered one set of warp threads would be lowered to let the woof go 
above them and below the other set, while, when the other rod was low- 
ered the alternate set of warp threads would be lowered to let the woof 
pass above them. 

An early device was the use of a foot treadle to lower the rods. 
Another improvement was the development of the needle for running the 

15 



THE STORY OF SILK 

woof. The first step was probably the use of a spindle or spool with thread 
for the woof on it ; the next step, which seems to have been delayed until 
the Roman Era, was to enclose the spool, as a bobbin in a shuttle. 

From various sources it is known that ancient silk was woven in 
many different patterns and colors rivalling the flowers of the meadows. 
Sixteentl^ century pictures show the Chinese using a draw loom for this 
purpose. 

_ . J n . ,. There are old Chinese pictures in existence showing 

Dyeing and Printing ^ ° 

the dyeing both of silk thread in skeins and of silk 
cloth in the piece. 

After the Chinese learned to make blocks with which to print 
their alphabet, before the Christian Era, they applied this method of 
printing to silk. Another very early method of printing was by means 
of painting over a pattern cut out in japanned ware, or, as we would say, 
a stencil. 




See page 15 



Ancient China— Weaving 



i6 




See page 16 



Mediaeval China— Dyeing Skeins 



Silk Culture in Ancient Europe 



SILK IN ANCIENT EUROPE. 




T how early a date silks were first imported into the countries 
around the Mediterranean we shall probably never know. 

Aristotle and Pliny say that Pamphila, the daughter of 
Plateos, king of the Island of Cos, was the first one who dis- 
covered the art of unravelling the heavy silks imported from 
the East, and re-weaving from them a tissue so translucent 
as to reveal and yet conceal a woman's charms. 

This implies that silks were imported before 400 B. C. But 
for nine centuries after this, the only manufacture of silk in the 
Western World was such an unravelling and re-weaving of foreign 
goods. 

There was, of course, no direct trade between the Mediterranean and 
China. Even the Romans bought their silks from the Persians, who in 
turn got them from northern India, or from some other point to which 
they were carried from China, while the Chinese themselves did all they 
could to keep the process of silk production a secret. 
D LL-^- r The fact that all silks were imported over difficult and 

r'ronibitwe hxpense ^ 

dangerous routes totalling thousands of miles, made 
them extravagances even for emperors. 

Nearchus, one of Alexander's generals, was said to have been the first 
Greek to don an all-silk garment. Silk was introduced into Rome after 
the Parthian wars, 54 B. C, but remained rare and cc r. Marcus 
Antonius sent an embassy to the Seres to make a treaty abc importing 
silk, but without results, and it continued to be supplied through the 
Persians. The first Roman to wear pure silk robes was Heliogabalus, 
the Emperor (222 A. D.) and he was considered extremely self-indulgent 
for so doing. 

The Emperor Aurelian (273 A. D.) refused to allow his wife 
to buy a silk shawl, because it was priced at literally its w^'^ht 
in gold. 

The Emperor Tacitus made it unlawful to wear silk unless mixed 
with other materials. 



THE STORY OF SILK 
Silk a Mystery to The source and nature of silk itself continued always a 
Europe mystery, and writer after writer referred to it in terms 

which show his misconception of its character. 

The first statement in the West concerning the silk worm is found in 
the "History of Animals," by Aristotle, who probably heard of it when 
he accompanied Alexander in his conquest of Persia. 

Virgil, in his line, "Seres comb their fleece from silken leaves," seems 
to have confused silk with cotton. 

Dionysius thought that the Seres combed the variously colored 
flowers of their desert land to make precious figured garments rivalling 
the spider's web. This is, at least, evidence that the silks imported had 
fine threads and were strikingly dyed. 

In the First Century A. D., Seneca wrote that the shining thread was 
gathered by the Seres from the boughs. 

Pausanius, the traveller and geographer, fancied that silk came from 
an animal twice the size of a large beetle, but resembling a spider, and 
that the Seres fed it upon green reeds until it burst, whereupon most of 
the thread was found in its body. 

In the second century, Tertullian imagined it came from a worm, 
which spread a web, floating through the air like a spider's, and then 
devoured it, after which, when it was killed, one could roll living threads 
from its stomach. 

Ammianus Marcellinus, in the fourth century, declared that the soil 
furnished the Seres so soft a wool that after being sprinkled with water 
and combed, it formed cloths such as silks. 

All of these grotesquely mistaken ideas serve to emphasize how great a 
mystery the production of silk really was, which thus baffled the investigation 
and even the imagination of the Mediterranean world for so many centuries. 

Th C It S d' '^^^ knowledge of its culture was, however, gradually 
spreading. About 289 A. D., it was carried to Japan 
along with Buddhism. It is said that there were imported four Chinese 
girls, who taught the Japanese the intricacies of silk culture, — a service 
which was considered so great that temples were raised in their honor. 

Under the twenty-first Mikado (459-479 A. D.) the planting of 
mulberry trees was introduced, and the whole culture seems to have been 
well established by 550 A. D. 

India, it is said, first learned the raising of silkworms from a Chinese 
princess (300 A. D.), who, at the time of her marriage, carried the eggs 
with her in her head dress. At any rate, it seems to have been introduced 



THE STORY OF SILK 

overland from China. From India it slowly spread to Persia and central 
Asia. 

But as late as 500 A. D., after the fall of Rome, it was still unknown 
in Constantinople or elsewhere in the Roman Empire of the East. Jus- 
tinian, who was Emperor from 527 A. D. to 565 A. D., decreed that the 
price of silk should not be over 8 aurei, or about $23 a pound. This, how- 
ever, was less than the merchants had paid for it, and they began to quit 
the business, selling the silks on hand for what they would bring. The 
Empress Theodora thereupon, in accordance with the decree, fined the 
merchants and confiscated the goods, the Emperor, himself, assuming 
control of the trade. 

Up to this time most of the silk had come through the Persians, but 
the wars which were now waged between them and the Empire (529-549 
A.D.) cut off the supply. Justinian tried to make arrangements to pro- 
cure silks through other routes, and let il be known that he was very 
anxious to break the Persian monopoly of the trade, 

Th M ster Sid J^^^ ^^ *^^^ moment, according to Propocius, two Nes- 
torian monks arrived from Serinda, and learning Jus- 
tinian's desire, went to him and said that they had long resided in the 
country called Serinda, and had carefully informed themselves of the 
method by which raw silk might be produced in the Roman Empire. In 
reply to minute questioning by the Emperor, they explained that raw silk 
is a product of silkworms. They said that it would be impossible to bring 
the worms alive to Byzantium, but that each silk moth produces number- 
less eggs, which long afterwards caretakers cover with fertilizer and hatch 
by warming. They declared that if the eggs could be procured, the rais- 
ing of the worms would not be over-difficult. 

The First Silk Culture '^^^ Emperor promised the monks a handsome reward 
in Europe i^ they could put their plan in execution. Thereupon 

they retraced the long journey to Serinda, and al- 
though their act was punishable by death, having secreted a good supply 
of the silk moth's eggs in hollow wands or staves such as were occa- 
sionally carried by pilgrims, returned with them in safety to Constanti- 
nople. Here they hatched the eggs by the methods they had learned 
abroad, and raised the worms by feeding them upon the leaves of the 
black mulberry tree, which was native to Greece. 

Justinian reserved a monopoly of the trade, and kept the monks at 
the head of the sericulture of the State, and as instructors for his sub- 
jects, among whom he tried to encourage the extension of the industry. 

23 



THE STORY OF SILK 

The progress made was scarcely encouraging, the price of silk rising 
to several times that formerly asked for the imported product. 

The wars with the Mohammedans, however, cut off importations 
from the East, and tended to stimulate silk culture in Greece. The same 
effect was produced when the Chinese rebel, Baichu, in 877 A. D., 
destroyed Canfu, the principal Chinese city from which silks were 
exported. 

But in spite of great encouragement, the silk industry spread but 
slowly from Constantinople throughout Greece, and,^ along with the 
Mohammedans, into northern Africa. As late as 1146 A. D. there seems 




Italian Filature of 1500 



In Southern Ei ope 



to have been no silk produced in Europe outside of the Greek 
Empire, except, perhaps, by the Saracens in Sicily and southern 
Spain. 

The successful introduction of silk into the rest of 
southern Europe was largely the result of several wars. 
In 1146 Rog^r, the first Norman king of Sicily, waged a campaign against 
the Greek Empire, and during its progress carried off a large number of 
silk raisers and weavers to Palermo in Sicily. Silk had already been intro- 
duced there by the Saracens, but the influx of skilled hands gave a great 
impulse to the industry. 

In a similar manner the Venetians, in 1203, through means of their 
victories over the Greek Empire, acquired a number of the best silk dis- 
tricts of Greece. Silk culture was considered so highly that even the 



THE STORY OF SILK 

noble families there could engage in it without degradation. Through 
Venice, the industry was carried to Italy, and in the next century spread 
there so that by 1300 there were several thousand engaged in it at Flor- 
ence, and it was highly important in other cities such as Genoa, Modena, 
and Bologna. 

The only successful throwing mill for twisting silk in Italy, and, for 
that matter, in Europe, outside of Greece, was in Bologna, and it remained 
so until 1500. 

During the Dark Ages of Europe, a great improvement in weaving 
seems to have been invented in the East. This was the draw loom, which 
made much easier the repetition of a pattern. The principle made use of, 
was to divide the number of threads of the warp into as many equal sec- 
tions as the pattern was to be repeated in a width of the goods, and fasten 
all the similarly numbered threads of each section to one cord. When 
this cord was drawn, all the corresponding threads would be lifted at 
once. At that time a helper was necessary to draw the cords governing 
the warp, but this was later done by machinery. 

The draw loom seems to have been found in use at Damascus, by the 
Crusaders, and the idea brought back by them to the West. 




Putting Warp on Roller, A. D. 1750 



IN FRANCE. 



XN France the silkworm was known and experimented with several 
centuries before its culture was successful there. It is believed 
that the first white mulberry tree to be planted in France, was 
brought from Syria by Guiappe de St. Aubon, on his return from 
the second Crusade about 1147 A. D. It was planted near Montmeliart, 
and, what seems very remarkable, was still standing in 1810. 

The weaving of silk seems to have been begun in Lyons and Tours 
not long after 1200. There was, however, no silk as yet produced there. 
In 1480 Louis XI brought silkworms from Genoa, Venice, and Florence, 
which were then under his power. Charles VIII in 1494 renewed the 
effort to raise mulberry trees. In 1521 Francis I brought a large number 
of silk weavers from Milan, which was then held by France, to Lyons, 
and also attempted to grow mulberry trees. 

The first nursery of white mulberry trees was set out by Fraucot, at 
Nimes, in 1564, but was only partially successful. In 1603 Henry IV (of 
Navarre) really established sericulture in France. He brought Ollivier 
de Serres, who was experienced in the industry, to his aid, and the people 
were encouraged to raise both mulberry trees and silk worms. Their first 
attempts, however, failed because the intricacies of the culture were not 
widely enougix understood. The worms died, the cocoons were pierced, 
and the whole attempt seemed about to end in disaster, but Henry IV 
established his own nursery, under experienced silk growers, and through 
their careful attention soon produced an abundance of silk. Instructors 
were supplied for the people, who, when they saw a successful example 
before them, again took up the culture. The experiments at this time 
cost 1,500,000 livres, but established the industry. 

26 



THE STORY OF SILK 

Colbert, the chief minister under Louis XIV, also did a great deal for 
the development of silk culture, and the textures of Lyons and Tours 
became famous. 

The industry was, however, hard hit by the Revocation of the Edict 
of Nantes in 1685. This drove some 400,000 Huguenots from France, 
many thousand of whom were engaged in the production and weaving of 
silk. It is said to have reduced the working looms of Lyons from 18,000 
to 4,000, and at Tours, from 11,000 to 1,200. It was thirty years before 
the industry recovered from the blow. 

Many thousands of the Huguenots settled in other countries, notably 
England, Switzerland, and Germany, and gave a tremendous impetus to 
the growth of silk manufacture there. 




■Winding on Spools, 1750 



27 





IN ENGLAND. 

'ilk was manufactured in England as early as 1251. At the mar- 
riage of the daughter of Henry III a thousand knights appeared 
with silk garments. In 1455 a committee of silk women pro- 
tested against the importation of Italian silks. There was a guild of silk 
throwers at Spitalfields, London, in 1562, John Tice, in 1573, claimed to 
have perfected the making of tufted taffetas and wrought velvets. The 
first large manufacture of silk dates from about 1585, when Flemish 
weavers settled there, fleeing, after the capture of Antwerp, during the 
revolt of Flanders from Spain. Queen Elizabeth was greatly pleased with 
silk, instead of the previous cloth stockings, and was much disappointed 
because Lee's stocking machine, invented in 1589, knitted only wool 
stockings. Nine years later, however, he succeeded in knitting silk, and 
presented her with a pair. 

James I was tremendously enthusiastic over silk, and just as fanatical 
against tobacco. He made a number of attempts to encourage the raising 
of silkworms in England, but after fourteen years of failure there, partly 
because of too damp a climate, shifted his efforts to the Colonies. 

A number of notable inventions marked the close of the Seventeenth 
Century. 

In 1671 Edmund Blood obtained a patent for carding and spinning 
waste silk, which was probably the first successful attempt in Europe to 
do so. A patent of 1687 was to use a device instead of a helper to draw 
the cords controlling the warp on a draw loom. In 1693 one was given 
Francis Pousset for weaving silk crepe. In fact, the influx of the Hugue- 
not weavers in 1685 fairly established that branch of the trade. 

There was as yet no thoroughly successful mill for throwing or twist- 
ing silk in England. But in 1718 John Lombe, of Derby, went to Italy 
and got a job in the guise of a common laborer in one of the great Italian 
silk throwing mills, besides bribing two workmen to let him in after 
hours. He studied the process, made drawings of the machines by night, 
and corrected them again from his observations in the mill. The three 
were discovered and he escaped to a ship at peril of his life. On his return 
to England, he built the first great silk throwing mill there. 

28 



THE STORY OF SILK 
Yf, M J f 1'he Eighteenth Century was marked by still more 
for Textiles epoch-making inventions for the better production of 

textiles. They marked the real beginning of the factory 
system, and ushered in the revolution that followed the application of 
power to industry. 

In 1733 Kay obtained a patent for a flying shuttle to be used in weav- 
ing. This placed a shuttle box at each end of the reed, or bed, along 
which the shuttle had previously been slid by hand. In each box was a 
picker or hammer, which was fastened by a cord to the picking stick. 
When the stick was jerked, the picker or hammer struck the shuttle and 
sent it flying across its bed, or shuttle race, between the threads of the 
warp, into the other shuttle box. Each shuttle was about ten inches long 
and contained a bobbin, or quill, wound with woof, so that Kay's inven- 
tion made the action of weaving almost continuous. It was a number of 
years, however, before it was extensively used in silk weaving. 

Jedidiah Strutt, in 1758, patented his ribbed stocking frame, the use 
of which enabled him to establish his large hosiery mills at Derby. 

Hargreave's spinning jenny (1770), Arkwright's roller spinning 
(1771), and Crompton's mule (1776), or combination of the two, by 1800 
changed spinning from a hand to a machine operation. 

Crawford, a London merchant, patented, in 1780, a silk doubling 
frame, which is notable because it included the first attempt to have a 
machine stop automatically when a thread was broken. Another inven- 
tion of that year was printing from plates, by Bell, who developed this into 
roller-printing in 1785. 

Cartwright, in 1774, constructed his power loom to apply either 
water power or steam to weaving. It was not at first a success, but 
improvements, in 1803, by Thomas Johnson, in dressing warp before it 
was put into the loom, and his devices to take up the slack in the cloth, 
eventually made the power loom practical. It became generally used in 
the cotton industry by 1815, though it did not make much headway in 
woolen or silk before 1835. 

In 1801 Joseph Marie Jacquard, of Lyons, France, exhibited at the 
French Exposition, his machine for weaving patterns. 

Jacquard, in his machine, passed each thread of the warp through an 
independent eye on a cord of its own. As in the draw loom, a number of 
these cords, one from each repeat of the pattern, are gathered into one, 
known as a lash, which is fastened to a hook. These hooks are controlled 
by paper cards with holes in them, on the same principle as the player- 



THE STORY OF SILK 

piano. Where the hole is punched, it allows the hook and thread of the 
warp to be lifted ; where it is not punched, the warp thread remains down 
and the weft is woven over it. The cards of the Jacquard machine took 
the place of the system of cords and complicated tie-up of the draw loom. 
Jacquard suffered from the hostility met with by many inventors. 
He was mobbed in Lyons, burned in effigy, and his machine smashed by 
the crowd. But today most figured designs are woven on the Jacquard 
machine. 

Sir Robert Peel, in 1802, first began to use the method of printing 
textiles on the resist system. This was an idea thought of by a commer- 
cial traveller, named Grouse, and sold for £5. The principle was to print 
textiles with wax or some other preparation that would resist the dye, so 
that after dyeing, when the wax was removed, the figures where it had 
been would remain white. 

Asa Arnold patented, in 1823, a bevel wheel for twisting, in order to 

keep the twist more uniform 
by keeping the tension on the 
thread more even. 

In 1824 a method, now 
common, of weaving velvets 
double, face to face, and im- 
mediately cutting them apart, 
was patented by Stephen 
Wilson. 

These inventions will 
give a conception of the fur- 
thest advance of the textile in- 
dustry just before the manu- 
facture of silk was established 
in America. But it must be 
remembered that, inasmuch 
as silk required much more 
delicate handling than either 
cotton or woolen, most of 
these inventions were in use 
in the cotton mills on an aver- 
age of twenty years before it 
was found possible to apply 
them successfully to silk. 
3° 




Joseph Marie Jacqu 
Inventor of the Jacquard Loo 



Silk Culture in America 




Original Cheney Mill 



SILK CULTURE IN AMERICA. 



THE story of the silk industry in America exhibits every phase from 
the wildest speculation to the utmost failure in one of its branches, 
and from the crudest beginnings to the most splendid success 
in another. .-. 

The first effort in America to war i.^ production, was when James I 
tried to compel the planters of Virgir to stop the cultivation of tobacco, 
and go to raising mulberry trees and silkworms to supply raw silk for the 
English factories. In 1623 it was decreed that any Virginia planter should 
be fined £10 if he did not cultivate at least ten mulberry trees for each 
hundred acres of his estate. 

The raising of silkworms was encouraged in 1657, when the Virginia 
Assembly offered 10,000 pounds of tobacco to any planter who should 
export i200 worth of raw silk or cocoons in a single year ; 5,000 pounds of 
tobacco to anyone producing 1,000 pounds of raw silk; or 4,000 pounds 
of tobacco to anyone producing silk exclusively. 

The bounty was withdrawn in 1666 and renewed in 1669, but it was 
never claimed. 

The fact was, that silk culture was not profitable in comparison with 
the raising of tobacco. It suffered from bad weaving, inexpert throwing 
or twisting, and inadequate cleaning. It was the policy of Parliament 
not to encourage the manufacture of silk in the Colonies, but only the 
raising, and the little silk cloth made was fuzzy, stiff, and of poor color 
and lustre. 

In Georgia, in 1732, a nursery of white mulberry plants was set out, 

33 



THE STORY OF SILK 



and a clergyman experienced in silk culture was sent there to instruct the 
colonists. Land was given to settlers who would plant 100 mulberry trees 
for each 10 acres. In 1735 eight pounds of raw silk were sent to England 
and there thrown, woven and presented to the Queen. Parliament, in 
1749, exempted silk produced in Georgia or Carolina from duty. In the 
same year a filature for reeling silk from the cocoons was built in Savan- 
nah in order to overcome the difficulty the individual growers had with 
this operation. 

Silk culture undoubtedly made considerable progress in the Colony, 
as evinced by the fact that in 1759, 10,000 pounds of cocoons were received 

at the filature. 

But just as silk culture 
could not compete with to- 
bacco in Virginia, so, after 
the English price was re- 
duced, it failed in competi- 
tion with cotton in Georgia. 
This was especially true 
after the invention of the 
cotton gin reduced the labor 
of separating cotton from 
the seeds to far less than 
that of reeling the silk. 

South Carolina was the 
next Colony to attempt the raising of the mulberry tree and silkworm. 
In 1755, Mrs. Pinckney carried with her to England, enough silk of her 
own raising to weave three dresses, one of which was presented to the 
Princess Dowager of Wales. The dress retained by herself was still in 
existence in 1809. The fact that a dress from this silk was considered 
worthy of such a presentation is boomerang-like evidence that South 
Carolina silk was still a novelty. 

In the North, Governor Leete, of Connecticut, who died in 1683, had 

some years previously raised silk, and had a suit made for himself from it. 

The mulberry was mentioned in legislation in Connecticut in 1732. 

Dr. N. Aspinwall sent trees to New Haven and Mansfield, together with 

the eggs of the silkworm, in 1762. 

The Connecticut Assembly, in 1763, offered 10 shillings bounty for 
each hundred mulberry trees planted and kept in good condition for three 
years; and another of 3 pence for each ounce of raw silk produced. In 

34 




Silk Reeling m Colonial Virgi 



THE STORY OF SILK 

order to spread the culture, half an ounce of mulberry seed was sent to 
each parish of the Colony. The bounty was continued for several years, 
and the culture grew to really important proportions. 

Dr. Stiles, president of Yale, was an enthusiastic silk grower from 
about 1758, and kept a diary of his experiences in silk culture between 
1763 and 1790. A woman and three children could make 10 pounds of 
raw silk worth $50 in five weeks. As late as 1810 the three chief silk 
counties of Connecticut produced $28,500 worth of raw and sewing silk, 
besides half that value of waste silk for spinning. 

Dr. Aspinwall also introduced the mulberry tree into Pennsylvania 
in 1767 or 1768. About 1770 there was built in Philadelphia, by popular 
subscription, a filature for reeling the silk from the cocoons which were 
to be raised by the silk growers. 

A Wild S eculation ^^ *^^ ^^^* P^^* °^ *^^ Nineteenth Century, silk culture 
in the United States, while not exactly prosperous, con- 
tinued apparently to promise possibilities of development, — sufficiently 
so, at least, to be the basis of a tremendous speculation in the thirties. 

The boom was built upon the morus multicaulis tree. This was one 
of the varieties of the mulberry raised in China for silk culture, whence it 
had been introduced, by way of the Philippines, into France. The first 
one in the United States is said to have been planted by Gideon B. Smith 
of Baltimore in 1826. It was soon. discovered that, in comparison with 
the black, or Italian white mulberry, its growth was much more rapid and 
its leaves several times larger. 

When news of these virtues spread, the nurserymen began to get calls 
for it from widely scattered sources. The demand soon exceeded the 
supply and a wild rush for the young plants took place. 

Several of the Cheney Brothers had begun experimenting with silk 
culture about 1833. Family diaries and silk culture papers of the next few 
years give not only a vivid idea of the morus multicaulis speculation, 
but of other conditions of the period too interesting to be passed over. 

The first nursery established by the Cheney Brothers was at South 
Manchester, Connecticut. An item of the time shows that morus multi- 
caulis trees, the price of which in 1834 was only about $4 a hundred, rose 
in 1835 to $10, and in the beginning of 1836 to $30 a hundred at the 
nurseries. 

A Norwegian bark arriving in April, 1836, had started from Marseilles 
with 70,000 of these Chinese mulberry trees, but on the way all perished 
except some 15,000, which were consigned to Cheney Brothers. It was 

35 



THE STORY OF SILK 

added that this was the last shipment which could be received until 
autumn. 

The possibilities of the venture were shown by the fact that on May 
12th, Ward Cheney had laid 300 trees horizontally, six inches deep in the 
ground, from which 3,700 shoots had sprung up. The leaves from these, 
as early as June 25th, he had commenced feeding to some 6,000 silkworms, 
which produced three bushels of cocoons. By August 1st the shoots were 
2^ feet high. With such a multiplication of trees and such quick pro- 
duction of silk, it is no wonder that the boom spread like wildfire. 

In November, 1836, the Cheneys leased, for $400 per year, 117 acres 
at Burlington, New Jersey. They established here a nursery and cocoonery 
and later another near Cincinnati, Ohio. 

It is an interesting detail that the trip from New York to Philadelphia 
at this time required from 10 A. M. to 5.30 P. M., and was made via a 
steamer from New York to South Amboy, a train to Bordentown, and 
another steamboat to Philadelphia. 

In October, 1837, the Cheneys had sold about $14,000 worth of trees 
from Burlington, N. J., and had about 50,000 on hand. The trees at this 
time brought about $30 a hundred. Silkworm eggs were $5.50 an ounce. 

Most of those who got in early, got big returns at first. A Monmouth, 
New Jersey, man had made a clean profit of $3,000 from a $400 invest- 
ment in the trees. With the multiplication of such instances of results, 
the rage for the multicaulis spread all over the country, and the price 
mounted still higher. 

In January, 1839, trees brought from a dollar to two dollars apiece, and 
in isolated cases soon reached as high as $300 and even $500 a hundred. 

But all of this speculation had been going on in spite of the panic of 
1837. During 1839 the hard times, which had already affected other fields, 
spread to the nurserymen and silk culture. At almost the same instant 
came the realization that the morus multicaulis was not hardy enough 
to be raised without difficulty in the North, and that, even if it could be, 
Americans would not take the trouble and pains necessary to the success- 
ful culture of silkworms. 

By 1840 the crash was complete. The silk growers had wasted their 
money. The nurserymen were left with great quantities of the trees on 
hand, which had cost them heavily and were now worth next to nothing. 
Importers could not even pay the freight on their shipments from abroad. 
The trees were sold for such humble uses as pea brush, or unceremoni- 
ously uprooted and burned. Practically everyone in the business bore his 

share of the loss. 

36 



THE STORY OF SILK 

This shock to silk culture was followed by another disaster, which 
was unavoidable, and an ever-present risk of the silk producer. 

In 1844 a fatal blight affected almost all of the mulberry 
Slk ^c'liur °Here ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ country. This caused the loss of all the mul- 
titudes of silkworms, and practically drove the growers 
out of business. Even at Mansfield, Connecticut, where it had been most 
prosperous, the culture was finally abandoned. 

Although several other attempts have been made to revive the pro- 
duction of raw silk in the United States, none of them has been suf- 
ficiently successful to make a repetition advisable. 

The fundamental reason for this is, not that mulberry trees and silk- 
worms cannot, though with difficulty, be raised in this country, but that 
the production of raw silk is essentially a household and hand process, 
still requiring, as in the days of ancient China, infinite patience and an 
altogether disproportionate amount of human labor. Even in Italy, during 
the silkworm season, the whole house, including the bedrooms and beds, is 
given over to the worms, upon which the women lavish every attention 
from daylight until late at night, — and for all this trouble and work, they 
net only six or seven cents a day. In Japan and China such household 
labor may bring as low as two or three cents a day. 

Silk cannot be grown by the highly paid labor of the United States in 
competition with such meagrely rewarded Oriental drudgery, nor can 
household hand labor compete here with other industries in which most 
of the energy is furnished by power and most of the work done by 
machinery. 

But the manufacture of silk goods has in recent years, along with all 
other textiles, been so revolutionized by the application of inventions and 
power, that the silk manufacturers of the United States, which is essen- 
tially the home of the machine, not only in- 
clude some of the greatest concerns, but 
produce much of the best silk in the world. 

^ „ ., , In Colonial days, whatever 

Silk Manufacturers ... . , , 

in America ^^^^ ^^^ manufactured here, 

was made entirely in the 
home. It was reeled by hand, thrown, or 
twisted and doubled by hand, and woven on 
the crude foot-power loom of the period by the 
women of the family. The early attempts at 

silk manufacture were all failures. Silk worms on Mulberry Leaves 

37 




THE STORY OF SILK 

The first silk mill in the United States seems to have been started by 
Rodney and Horatio Hanks, at Mansfield, Connecticut, in 1810. The mill 
was but 12 X 12 feet in size, and was intended to make sewing silk and 
twist on a machine of their own, which was run by water power. This 
mill and two others, with which they were later connected, were aban- 
doned by 1828, largely because the machinery was too crude to produce 
satisfactory results. In 1815, William H. Hortsmann, in Philadelphia, 
built a mill for trimmings and ribbons in which he attained partial success 
with machines for plaiting, braiding, and fringe cutting. A Jacquard loom 
was imported by him in 1824. The Mansfield Silk Company, which was 
begun in the center of the silk growing district, made use of water power 
for reeling, but was unsuccessful in its attempts at weaving, and failed as 
a result of its speculations in the morus multicaulis. 

The first really successful silk manufacturers in the United States 
were the Cheney Brothers. Their original mill was started as the Mt. 
Nebo Silk Mills, at South Manchester, Connecticut, in January, 1838, and, 
although somewhat neglected during the wild speculation in the morus 
multicaulis, it is the only mill established before that date that has been 
permanently successful. 

The story of the Cheney silk mills is typical of the growth 
egmmngs ^^ ^^^ industry, and, even more than that, of the develop- 
ment of the United States from an agricultural to a manufacturing 
country. A number of details which have been preserved in old diaries, 
show how crude was their beginning, and, in fact, the start of most 
factories at that period. 

Ralph, Ward, and Frank Cheney, together with E. H. Arnold, agreed 
in November of 1837 to form a company for silk manufacture. Their first 
idea was to adapt the barn for a mill. The machinery was ordered in 
December, to be completed April 1st. The company was actually formed, 
January 2, 1838, with a capital stock of $50,000. 

It was decided not to try to use the barn, but to build a factory. The 
size was only 32 x 45. A deal was made to have the timber hewn out at 
four cents a foot, while the joiner's work was contracted for at $262. An 
old-fashioned bee was held on March 31st for the raising of the mill. 

The power for the silk factory was taken from the bottom of the tail- 
race of a mill which served at different times for paper making, grist 
grinding, and distilling. A little undershot wheel was used, and there was 
altogether only a six-foot fall. When the mill above was not running, the 

38 



THE STORY OF SILK 

water supply was shut off from the silk factory. The Cheney factory was 
at the end of a road, the track of which was changed at the pleasure of the 
driver. Beyond the mill was a rather sandy pasture, full of huckleberry 
bushes. 

One important feature of the factory was the use, in doubling 

n mpor an ^^^ twisting, of the new Rixford roller made for the Cheneys. 

This was turned only by friction, and hence would give a 

little in drawing out the silk, and thus avoid breaking it, as the former 

fixed rollers had been constantly doing. 

As this principle is well-nigh essential in working silk, the Cheney 
factory, even at its very inception, introduced an almost revolutionary 
improvement. 

Details of the Forties ^^^ ^^^^ energies of the company were devoted chiefly 
to sewing silk, which was made almost entirely from 
raw silk imported from the East. 

Records of 1843 show that the average pay in the silk mill, employing 
both men and women, was only fifty-one cents a day. 

In 1844, Ward Cheney learned the main points of silk dyeing from a 
Mr. Valentine, of Northampton, Massachusetts, and they were soon 
applied to the business, though at considerable cost for experimenting. In 
this year sewing silk was sold to their agent in Philadelphia at from $6.50 
to $7.50 a pound. 

The first practical machine for making sewing silk was patented by 
Frank Cheney in 1847. The success of the machine in doubling, twisting, 
and winding, depended largely upon the use of live or moving spindles on 
a carriage which ran back and forth on tracks in the second story of 
the mill. 

It is an interesting sidelight, that the employees used to take up the 
track for dances at night and relay it when the dance was over. The chil- 
dren were often brought along and encouraged to sleep on the benches 
while the parents danced. Other entertainments, including private theat- 
ricals, were not infrequently given in this improvised hall. 

In 1848 the wages of the men averaged $1.14 a day; of the women, 
63 cents a day. The total average was 72 cents. 

It is a curious fact that the Public Library of the town developed from 
the books which were read to the girls in the skein room while they 
worked. At that time no machinery was employed in this il^om, and the 
girls used to bring books of their own, which were supplemented by others 
from the concern, to be read aloud there. These were afterwards brought 
together and formed the nucleus of the library. 




Prisons After Washing 
Cheney Brothers' Factory 



A New Field 
of Industry 



THE STORY OF SILK 

Influence of the '^^c invention of the sewing 
Sewing Machine machine greatly increased 
the call for sewing silk, and 
created a demand for stronger and more 
even thread than had been used in hand 
sewing. Whereas, in hand sewing the 
thread had been twice doubled and twisted, 
it was found valuable for machine sewing 
to combine three threads. The manufacture 
of machine twist was begun by the Cheneys 
as early as 1852, and soon developed into 
an important department. 

Hitherto the greater part of the cocoons, from which the silk 
moths had emerged, and of the raw silk which was too 
tangled to be reeled, had been practically wasted. Attempts 
had been made to spin it, as was done with wool or cotton, but without 
notable success. In 1855, however, the Cheneys began the spinning of 
such waste silk in an important way. The only machines they could get 
at first for this purpose were those used for cotton or wool. These 
required many modifications and an expenditure of some thirty thousand 
dollars before they could be adapted successfully to silk. It is not too 
much to say that in utilizing this great waste product, the Cheneys cre- 
ated an entirely new branch of the silk industry in this country, although 
silk had already been crudely spun in factories in Europe. 

To supply the growing business, another mill had already been built 
at South Manchester, and, in 1854, mills were established in Hartford, 
which were used chiefly for ribbon making. The name was changed in 
1854 to the Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company, and the capital 
stock was increased in 1855 to $400,000. 

In the cornerstone of the old office building, which was built 
in the Fifties ^^ 1857, was deposited, among other papers, a brief descrip- 
tion of the state of the business, extracts from which may 
give an idea of industrial conditions at the time. The buildings were still 
of wood. The power still came chiefly from the brook and was furnished 
by two turbine wheels of 20-horse power, each 26 inches in diameter. 
Steam was supplied for the dyehouse from two locomotive boilers. 

An invention of the Fifties, made in the factory, greatly simplified 
spooling. It had previously required one girl to attend to each machine. 

40 



THE STORY OF SILK 

Frank Cheney and Grant, after only three months' experimenting, evolved 
a spooling machine which enabled one girl to attend to three machines. 
The Cheneys took a rather important part in the War 
of Secession. C. M. Spencer, who had been employed 
at the mills since 1847, had, even before the war began, conceived the 
idea for the Spencer repeating carbine. He had constructed one in the 
machine shop of the mill, and had taken out a patent on it March 6, 1860. 
When the war came, the Cheneys arranged with him to manufacture it. 
Charles Cheney, after exhibiting it at Washington, got a trial order from 
the Navy Department for 1,000. The Cheneys realized that a silk mill 
offered very poor facilities for rifle manufacture, and leased part of the 
Chickering piano factory at Boston for the purpose. A great deal of 
difficulty was experienced in convincing the War Office of the practic- 
ability of a repeating rifle. General Ripley, the Chief of Ordnance, had 
little use for what he called such "new-fangled jimcracks," while one of 
the secretaries declared it a "damphool contraption to use up ammunition." 
James G. Blaine, however, got the concern an order for 10,000 from 
Gideon Welles of the War Department, but this was very far from enough 
to pay for the new machinery necessarily constructed to manufacture 
them. 

A rifle was presented to President Lincoln, personally, by Mr. 
Spencer, who, at the President's request, took it all apart and put it 
together again with only a screw-driver. An engagement was made to 
test it the next day, August 19, 1863. President Lincoln's seven shots at 
the target were so good, although somewhat bettered by Mr. Spencer's, 
that the Government ordered practically all the rifles the company could 
make. Some 200,000 were completed by the end of the war, after which 
the plant was sold to the Winchester Arms. It was not a profitable 
venture. 

. The tariff" that was put on silk goods during the war 
made it possible to develop the weaving of silk far 
more extensively in this country. 

Cheney Brothers took up the weaving of ribbons on a considerable 
scale in 1861, and of grosgrains in 1866. It is a striking fact that, whereas 
the price of grosgrains in 1869 was $1.96 a yard, over three times what 
it is at present, the average wages of the time were only $1.49 paper, 
worth not more than one-third of the present wages. 

In the silk, as well as other manufacturing industries, it is indisput- 
able that while inventions have multiplied wages, these same inventions 



THE STORY OF SILK 

and competition have even more remarkably lowered prices, in spite of 
the fact that the protective tariff rate has remained comparatively level. 
And in many cases it is only the tariff that has made the development of 
the industry possible at all in this country. 

The growing prosperity of the company is shown by the construc- 
tion of separate spinning mills in 1872. In 1873 the name was changed 
from the Cheney Brothers Manufacturing Company to simply Cheney 
Brothers. The Cheney mills, in 1880, took up extensively the weaving 
of plush and velvet, for which it was considered necessary to import two 
looms from Germany. The velvet looms, now in general use, were in- 
vented in 1892 by Richard Monners in the Cheney Mills. 




Cheney Brothers' Factory, 1876 

In 1882 another far-reaching invention was made in these 
mills. This was the Grant reel. 

Up to that time there had always been a great deal of difficulty and 
waste caused by the snarling in skeins of silk. Grant, who had been 
employed in the factory since 1840, invented an improvement by which 
a bar moving slowly a few inches sidewise and back between the feeding 
spool and the thread, directed it so that the skein was wound on the reel 
overhanded, somewhat as a boy winds a kite cord. Where the threads 
crossed could then be tied with a string, so as to make snarling almost 
impossible. 

This invention made a practical revolution, not only in silk, but in 
cotton and worsted winding throughout the world. 



THE STORY OF SILK 

It is unnecessary to follow the further progress of the 
apt xpanston Q-j^^^^y Brothers in detail. 

The mills have not merely increased wonderfully in number and 
size, but have been improved with the introduction of every up-to-date 
machine and process that seemed to promise greater efficiency. At the 
present time they include over 36 acres of floor space. 

The long history of the Cheney mills is not only evidence 
cff • '*" ^ ^" that their products have for many years been the standard 
of the country, but so extensive an experience, concen- 
trated in one family, necessarily evolves a far higher quality of manage- 
ment. When this is supplemented by the similarly long experience of 
individual employees, the result is an unequaled and uniformly high 
character of work. 

In establishing a pension system for their employees, it was neces- 
sary to make out a table showing the number of years each had been with 
the concern. The statistics of 1914 are as follows: 



CHENEY BROTHERS 
Employment Bureau Statistics, 1914 

Female 

Employes. Totals. 

1070 2223 

389 903 

183 468 

85 251 

52 164 

43 152 

30 102 

11 38 

18 48 

4 14 

3 

2 

4368 



Length of 
Employment. 

0- 5 years . . . 
5-10 " . . . 


Male 
Employes. 

1153 

514 


10-15 " . . 


285 


15-20 " . 


. . . . 166 


20-25 " . . . 


112 


25-30 


109 


30-35 " ... 
35-40 " , . 


72 

27 


40-45 " ... 


... 30 


45-50 " . . 


10 


50-55 " ... 


. . . .3 


55-60 " ... 


2 


Totals . . . 


. 2483 

5 years or over, 2145. 



1885 



The figures show that some of the employes have been with the 
firm for fifty years and that practically half of them have had over five 
years' experience in the Cheney mills. 

43 



THE STORY OF SILK 

A r A '^° view the development of the silk industry in a broader 
J J f light, the Cheneys have seen silk manufacture grow in 

America under the tariff from almost nothing to tremendous 
proportions, while during the same period it has actually decreased in 
England under free trade. Thus in the United States the value of manu- 
factured silk increased from $6,600,000 in 1860 to $197,000,000 in 1910, 
while the number of employes rose from 5,000 to 120,000. Importations 
of manufactured silk amounted to about $33,000,000 in 1861, and have 
remained about constant. Thus the home manufacturers have supplied 
the greater demand due to increased population and higher prosperity. 
In Great Britain, however, where there was an import duty till 1861, 
upon the removal of that duty the imports of manufactured silk rose 
from £6,000,000 in 1861 to £13,000,000 in 1911, but silk manufacture there 
decreased so greatly that where it busied 116,000 in 1861, it employed 
only 37,000 in 1901. 

In 1913 the United States consumed as much raw 
The United States the ^-^^y. -^^ manufacturing silk goods as France, Ger- 

Greatest Silk Manu- _ , i t-i i ■■ i mi -.r^-,^ 

facturing Country "^^^y^ ^^^1^' ^^^ England put together. The 1913 

statistics of the production and consumption of silk 
in the world were as follows : 

Production, 1913 

Japan, Export 11,000,000 kl. 

Shanghai and Canton, Export 8,750,000 

Europe 4,000,000 

Levant and Central Asia 2,250,000 

26,000,000 
Consumption, 1913 

United States 10,700,000 kl. 

France 4,400,000 

Germany 3,600,000 

Switzerland . 1,700,000 

Russia 1,700,000 

Italy 1,700,000 

Austria-Hungary 1,100,000 

England 800,000 

Other Countries 600,000 

Kilo is 2.2 pounds. 26,300,000 

44 



The Sotfi»ce of Yottf Silk Dtcss 

CULTIVATED SILKS all stages 



VARIETIES OF WILD SILK 

ALL STAGES 



%i" vvfcT 'vr 




Colored insert showing various stages in the development of the silk 

worm to adult moth. Because of the minuteness of reproduction, the 

eggs are not illustrated. The silk worms, cocoons and moths illustrated 

above are one-third actual size 



THE STORY OF SILK 




Gathering Mulberry Leaves for the 
Silk Worms, Japan 



Modern Improvements 
in Silk Culture 



The Cheney Silk Mills Just as the United 
'^ ?.7''.T* '" States is the greatest 

the World . , , . 

Silk manufacturing 
country in the world, so the Cheney 
Brothers are the largest silk manufacturers 
both in the United States and in the world. 
They are the only concern in any country 
that carries silk manufacture completely 
through all its different processes from the 
raw silk to the finished goods. 

These processes are so interesting and 
so characteristic of the revolution from the 
ancient hand to the modern methods of 
machine manufacture as to be well worth following more in detail. First, 
however, we must mention the few chief improvements in modern silk- 
worm culture over the ancient Chinese methods already described. 

As an exporter of raw silk, Japan has passed China, 
though the total Chinese production for home con- 
sumption is probably the greater. 
The best silkworms are still considered those that spin once a year, 
although toward the tropics silkworms spinning two, three, or even more 
times annually are also cultivated. Wild or tussah silkworms of various 
kinds are now used to some extent, especially since the development of 
silk spinning, and of modern methods for bleaching and dyeing their silks. 
Their cocoons, which are spun in the trees where they feed, must be 
hunted for and gathered. Some of them can be reeled after being softened 
with an alkali, but others can only be spun. 
While silk culture among the peasants 
is practically the same as it has been for 
thousands of years, modern improvements 
are being made use of in cocooneries and 
filatures. 

Cold storage now enables the eggs to 
be kept with greater certainty until they are 
to be hatched. For hatching they are placed 
in incubators, where they are kept at an even 
temperature for from 25 to 30 days. 

In Japan a dwarf mulberry only four or 
five feet high is popular for feeding. 

45 




Feeding Mulberry Leaves to the 
Voracious Young Silk W^orms, Japan 




THE STORY OF SILK 

In caring for the worms, the 
chief modern innovation seems to 
be a microscopic examination that 
enables diseased worms to be de- 
stroyed before the plague spreads. 
One of the greatest achievements of 
Pasteur was the discovery of the 
germ that caused the silkworm dis- 
ease in France. 

After the cocoons have been 
spun, they are suffocated usually by 
hot, dry air. 

In reeling, the better filatures 
now employ steam power. The 
Reeling Raw Silk-Japan ^^^^^ '^^ ^^c basins where the 

cocoons float is kept hot, 60 degrees centigrade, by steam. Automatic 
cocoon beaters, revolving in the basins, are used to brush off the frisons, 
or first threads of the cocoons, before they are reeled. While six cocoons 
are most commonly reeled at a time, the number may run anywhere from 
two to twelve, or more. The filaments are joined by passing them through 
a glass button. 

The silk is cleaned and twisted in reeling much better than formerly, 
either by bringing the thread back and passing it around itself some 200 
times in a seven-inch spiral, or by twisting the threads of two different 
basins around each other before they are passed on to separate reels. The 
filament is dried before going on the reel by steam-heated tubes running 
along the travellers. The reels are run at from 80 to 100 revolutions a 
minute. 

In Italy the girls may get as high as 22 to 25 cents a day for eleven 
hours' work. 

In Japan they work from 5 o'clock in the morning to 11 o'clock at 
night, though two hours are taken out for tea and meals. For these 16 
hours of labor they receive from 15 to 22 cents a day. 

Both in Italy and Japan the women who do reeling at home earn 
only about a half of these amounts. 

When reeled, the raw silk is done up into hanks of from 80 to 100 
grams each for export. The best raw silk is worth from $4.50 to $6 a 
pound, which is not far from the price it brought 100 years ago. 

The silk that cannot be reeled, including the frisons or first threads, 
and the pierced cocoons, is packed in bales and exported in that form. 

46 



Significant Figures 




Weighing Raw Silk on Delicate Scales— Japan 



THE STORY OF SILK 

The value of this so-called waste silk 
runs from 40 cents to $1.25 a pound. 
Before leaving the 
subject of raw silk, 
a few significant figures may be 
interesting. 

To make a pound of raw silk 
requires from 2,500 to 3,000 cocoons, 
each cocoon furnishing a filament of 
perhaps 600 yards in length. Thus, 
if the cocoons were reeled sepa- 
rately, which, because of their fine- 
ness, is practically impossible, it 
would require about 1,800,000 yards 
or a thousand miles of single silk 
filament to weigh a pound. 

Ordinarily some six or seven cocoons are reeled together, producing 
the size known as 13-15 deniers. A denier is a French weight, of which 
it requires 533 1-3 to make an ounce avoirdupois. The ordinary hank or 
skein is 400 French ells, or 520 yards. The number of deniers which a 
hank weighs is spoken of as the "count" of the yarn. 

We have now arrived at the stage in the preparation of raw silk, at 
which, in the form either of reeled or waste silk, it comes into the Cheney 
mills. To follow it further we must go through the plant itself. 

A visit to the Cheney mills is well worth making, not merely 
Cheney Mills ^^^ause it will show the many steps passed through by the 
cocoons and raw silk before they emerge in perhaps the most 
lavishly brocaded velvet, but because it may give one a sense of the 
intricacies of present-day manufacture, and help one to realize that the 
application of power to machinery has produced, within the life of this one 
firm, greater changes than occurred in all the previous 5,000 years of 
recorded history. 

Such a journey through the mills requires all of one well-filled day, 
but only a summary can be given in the space at our disposal. 

Anyone who expects, on a visit to South Manchester, Connecticut, 
to see an ordinary manufacturing town, or mills crowded into the midst 
of the usual huddled-together manufacturing district, will be most 
pleasurably surprised. 

The various mills are nestled in the midst of great stretches of rolling 

47 




The Pierced Cocoons as They Arrive 
in Bales — Cheney Brothers' Factory 



The Waste Silk 



THE STORY OF SILK 

green lawns, shaded with wide-spreading 
colonial oaks. The nearest residences are 
those o£ the Cheneys themselves. This fact 
alone eliminates the evils that occasionally 
arise where absentee proprietors live so far 
away as to get out of touch with conditions 
in their plants. 

The several mills include 36 acres of 
floor space, and have about 4,500 employees. 
The investment in the plant is now capi- 
talized at $7,000,000.00, The value of the 
raw stock required to keep the mills running 
for a year is almost $4,000,000.00. 
Much of the raw stock comes in as waste silk, and the first 
requirement is to bring this to the point already reached by 
reeled silk, or, in other words, to spin it into yarn. 

Both the pierced cocoons and frisons, in order to have their natural 
gum removed, are boiled in soap suds, and dried in a revolving extractor, 
which throws out the water by centrifugal force. Chemical reagents, 
rotting, and maceration may also be used for ungumming. 

In the dressing mill the cocoons are opened by being fed 
resstng t through rollers against a revolving cylinder, studded 
with innumerable wire hackles or needles which pull the fibres into sheets 
or laps. These sheets, and the frisons, which have been similarly pulled 
out, are run through a picking machine which still further draws out the 
sheet and cuts it into nine-inch lengths, which the machine itself hangs 
like flags over small rods. 

These rods are put into a dressing 
machine with revolving drums covered with 
teeth, where the silk is combed and cleaned 
from much of its dirt and the remains of the 
chrysalides which have clung to it. The 
flags of silk wound around the rods, are car- 
ried to a machine which divides them into 
four or five short laps. 

The silk is then inspected and cleaned 

by being placed over long glass tables with 

the light shining through them from below. 

The laps are run together on a machine 

48 




Flag from Dressing Machine 
Cheney Brothers' Factory 



Spinning the Waste Silk 




Drawing Frame — Cheney- 
Brothers' Factory 



THE STORY OF SILK 

into longer laps measuring from seven to 
nine feet, and weighing possibly 4^ ounces. 
They are now ready to be taken to the spin- 
ning mill. 

In the spinning mills 

the lap is drawn out 
into what is called a sliver, approximately 
the size of a finger, by being run through 
the rollers of drawing frames, the second 
of which turns considerably faster than 
the first. In order to get the fibres 
even several of these slivers, after being 
combed, are drawn out again into another 
sliver, and the process may be repeated several times. The sliver 
is now passed through roving frames, which wind it on bobbins, 
where it may be said first to take the form of thread. From here it is 
run through a spinning frame where it receives a partial twisting. 
It is now known as a single, and for some purposes may be used in 
this form. 

The cleaning of the silk thread is done in what is called the gasing 
room. It passes through several flames of gas which singe off the extra 
fuzz, but travels too rapidly to be itself burned. It is cleaned by being run 
around small cylinders, which are turned by friction. 

The thread, in order to be made uniform, now goes to the controlling 
room, where many threads are run through the controller at once for the 
removal of knots. 

It is then taken to a Grant reel, where it is wound off, as previously 
explained, into a skein, the threads of which 
are so criss-crossed, that, after being tied 
where they cross, they will not tangle. 
These skeins of silk weigh from four to 
five ounces. After being inspected they are 
bundled up and sent to the warehouse, from 
which they may be sold as they are, sent 
to the dye house to be dyed, or the 
weaving mill to be woven undyed into 
goods. 

All of this labor, it must be borne in 
mind, has been necessary to produce in the 
49 



m 

in 





Spinning— Cheney Brothers' Factory 




THE STORY OF SILK 

spun silk comparatively the same kind 

of single thread as is produced in cotton 

spinning. 

^, . ,„,.„.. The reeled silk must 

Throwing the Reeled Stlk , . ,, ,. .. 

be carefully distm- 
guished from the spun silk. The reeled silk 
"single/' or the raw silk goes to what has 
long been termed the throwing mill. Throw- 
ing is taken from an old Anglo Saxon word, 
"thrawn," meaning to twist, and the purpose 
of the mill is to twist, double, twist and 

■Winding Thread from Skeins to Bobbins^ , . 

Cheney Brothers' Factory combmc agam as oftcu as neccssary to pro- 

duce the thread desired. Although this 
sounds comparatively simple, it will be remembered that it was several 
centuries before the English learned to throw silk well enough to com- 
pete with the Italians. 

The skeins of reeled silk are put on a light skeleton reel, called a 
swift, which can be changed in size to fit various skeins. The silk is 
wound off of this reel upon a bobbin simply by the friction caused by 
the turning of a lead cylinder against the bobbin, — a method which, as 
already mentioned, avoids breaking the threads. 

The reeled silk is often cleaned at this stage by running it between 
carefully set knives. 

The principle of twisting consists of running a horizontal bobbin 
off on a vertical one that turns at a faster speed. The yarn runs through 
the eye of a little metal flyer on the top of the first bobbin, and the differ- 
ence in speed between the two bobbins regulates the amount of twist. 
Singles are sometimes given 60 twists to the inch. 

The doubling is done by running the two threads together through 
the single eye of a guiding bar onto another bobbin. It is very important 
to have the machine stop if a thread breaks. For this purpose, before they 
are joined, each thread holds up one end of a separate lever. If the thread 
breaks the other end of the lever falls and stops the bobbin. 

After doubling, the thread may be again twisted, — in the case of 
organzine, in an opposite direction. It may be steamed to set the twist. 

The Cheney mills run some 30,000 spindles in the throwing depart- 
ment, and 8,000 more in winding and spooling. 

Before leaving the subject of yarn or thread there are a few 
sages ^j.^^g usages that need explaining. 
5° 



THE STORY OF SILK 

Spun silk is numbered on either the English or French system. On 
the English system the number of 840-yard hanks required to weigh a 
pound avoirdupois decides the number of the yarn, while a sub-number 
tells whether the yarn is single or of two or three threads. Thus number 
50-2 is a two-cord yarn requiring 50 hanks or 42,000 yards to the pound. 

On the French system the thousands of meters of the single thread 
required to weigh a kilogram designates the number of the yarn, while 
the smaller figure tells the number of threads, but a two-ply weighs 
twice as much as the same number single. Thus 2-100 is made up of two 
number 100 singles, and runs 50,000 meters per kilogram. 

Raw silk singles with the gum still in them are often used as 
warp for goods which are not dyed until woven. 

In yarn dyed goods the usual warp is organzine, which consists of 
two or more raw silk threads well twisted, both in the singles and after 
doubling. 

The weft and filling of both yarn dyed and piece dyed goods, is 
commonly tram, which consists of two or more threads scarcely twisted 
at all before doubling, and generally only slightly twisted after 
doubling. 

For crepe or chiffon, however, the yarn used is a tram that is given 
a very hard twist, from 40 to 80 turns an inch. 

Floss silk generally consists of a large number of singles very 
slightly twisted. It is not used in weaving. 

Embroidery silk consists of a large number of slackly twisted 
singles, doubled and again slightly twisted in the reverse direction. 

Hand sewing silk is made by winding and doubling the raw 
silk, giving it a hard twist, doubling and 
twisting again in the reverse direction 
under a strong tension. 

Machine twist is made in a similar way, 
except that it has a three-ply, instead of a 
two-ply thread. 
^ ^ , One great class of goods is 

Yam Dyeing , j . ^, , r 

dyed in the yarn before weav- 
ing, while the other class is not dyed or 
printed until after weaving. The first is 
called yarn dyed, the second piece dyed or 

Orinted p-nnd<5 ^'^^ ^^^^"^ Spinner-Cheney 

prmtea gOOaS. Brothers' Factory 

51 




THE STORY OF SILK 

M^lx^nfc M W/ ■' -^J^-;^^^^ '^ We are now at the point where part 

tfwmF! ^UM.lM ^ ^ ^' ^:' '^ ' °^ ^^^ ysrn is sent to the dye house to be 

^nB^^^^^^l/m^^^^ '^^^ S^"^ h^s already been taken out of 

lilPlat^^^^^^ ^^^l P^^'^^i spun silk yarn, but still remains in the yarn 

ji&^^j^^^^X^^ ^y^ made from reeled silk. In order to take the 

IM ' jMltj^C-^l pT" ^ M dye, the reeled silk is usually ungummed by 

H^^^^^HHIw ""^^^^^ being boiled in soap and water and rinsed in 

K'^°'°°'''''^|^^^H^^^p cold water. The loss of the gum reduces 

M g,iLJM^^B^Bm|t^ I the weight approximately a quarter. A few 

"*"* * "" ^^^^^^^^^^M" yarns, such as are used in cheaper ruchings. 

Vats for Dyeing Cloth in thePiece — -l j i -^i >i • -. 

Cheney Brothers' Factory "lay bc dyed With the gum m, and some, 

known as souples, with part of the gum in. 

Before dyeing, the silk may be soaked in mordants, the object of 
which is to make the yarn take the color better, but they are not as 
necessary as in the case of cotton, because silk has a stronger affinity 
for dyes. 

In the old method, the yarn was hung over rods and let fall into the 
bark, or vat, of hot dye stuff. Workmen had constantly to turn the skeins 
to keep the color even and avoid a streak where the skein rested on the 
rod. 

The machine now used for the purpose consists of a large reel, similar 
to a small Ferris wheel, on the rounds of which are hung the skeins. 
When the reel revolves, not only are the skeins dipped periodically into 
the dye, but each round of the wheel is itself turned automatically so as 
to keep the skeins turning and avoid a streak in any particular spot. The 
dye is kept at the right temperature by steam. 

After dyeing, the yarn was formerly hung over a peg in the wall, and 
wrung as much as possible by turning a smooth stick which had been run 
through the other end of the skein. The present method uses a revolv- 
ing cylinder or extractor that drives out the water by centrifugal force. 
The lustre formerly added by hand wringing is now given by stretching 
the yarn under steam pressure. 

Yarns are not only dyed before being made up into goods, but the 
warp itself is sometimes printed. 

We are now prepared to follow the dyed and 

eavmg epar men ^j^^jy^^j yarns together through the weaving 

department. The first step is to make the warp, which consists of the 

long and comparatively strong threads that run lengthwise in the goods. 

52 




Beaming Off Warp — Cheney Brother 

53 



THE STORY OF SILK 



Preparing the Warp 



The organzine or yarn for the warp comes into the 
warping room on spools or bobbins. The warp is 
usually, though not always, made in sections. As many spools as there 
are to be threads in a section are placed on the iron pegs of a rack, which 
commonly stands up vertically. In order to keep the threads separate and 
make them spread evenly on the reel, each thread is first passed between 
two teeth of one or more reeds, which resemble a fine comb, though closed 
at both ends. Drawing the warp through the reed at this stage is still 
usually a hand process requiring much care and labor. From the reed the 
threads are run upon a large reel forming an even spaced band, the width 
of which depends on the number of threads, and the length of which may 
be anything up to five or six hundred yards. 

Enough sections are made on the reel to give the number of threads 
required for the width of the goods. 

From the warping reel the warp is run off upon the cylinder or beam 
that is to be placed in one end of the loom. 

Each thread of the warp must now be run through what is called the 
harness, which consists of a number of shafts, from each of which are 
suspended the heddles. As previously explained, these are cords strung 
between the top and bottom of each shaft with a loop or eye in the center 
of each cord. 

The threads of the warp are each drawn, one at a time, through its 
own eye. This operation must be done with absolute correctness, for if 
an eye is skipped or a thread misplaced it will show throughout the whole 
piece of goods. Drawing through the heddles is still done to a large extent 
by hand and is a tedious process. 

When a harness is on hand with the 
ends of an old warp in it properly arranged 
for a new pif'-e of goods, there is a method 
of saving the crouble of drawing through the 
heddles by joining or twisting a thread of 
the new warp to each thread of the old. 
This twisting may be done by hand or by a 
mechanical twister. To each shaft are fas- 
tened the heddles that in weaving must be 
lifted at the same time, allowing the shuttle 
to pass beneath them, for forming that 
particular pattern or weave. There may be 
from two to thirty shafts. 
54 




A Mechanical Twister at Work 
Cheney Brothers' Factory 



THE STORY OF SILK 






^ 






Quilling — Cheney Brothers'" Factory 



After passing through the heddles, the 
warp is run through the weaving reed. It 
is often drawn between the teeth of this reed 
by hand, which requires a long time, but 
may be inserted with a machine. One or 
more threads may be passed through each 
dent. 

The loom beam, harness and reed are 
then placed in the loom ready for weaving 
in the weft or filling. 

Th W ft '^^^ weft or woof consists usually 
of tram or slackly twisted yarn 
and is frequently of spun silk. This is wound by a quilling machine 
from the spools upon a quill, so called from its shape, which is 
placed inside a shuttle, and will let the weft unwind as fast as the 
shuttle flies. 

. The first thing that strikes one on entering the weav- 

eavmg oom .^^ room is the resounding racket, like the constant 
rattle of musketry. 

Silk weaving is still far from automatic, -The weaver must keep the 
shuttle filled, clean the warp, keep the threads straight, and see that there 
are no imperfections. 

The loom itself lifts the warp threads, drives the shuttle flying 
through, pushes the reed against the woven goods to crowd the filling into 
place, lifts the next set of warp threads, lets the warp off its beam as 
required, and takes up the goods. 

The arrangement of the heddles on the shafts will give almost an 
endless variety of weaves. One of the simplest is taffeta, where the weft 
may be run merely over one thread and under the next, returning over and 
under the alternate threads. . .. satin, the woof is used merely for tying 
together the warp, most of which is left to show on the surface. 

Where the pattern is very complicated the Jacquard 
machine is employed. As already noted, on this system 
each heddle or eye, through which the warp runs, hangs from its own cord. 
One cord from each repeat of the pattern forms the lash which is fast- 
ened to a hook, the lifting of which before each pick br trip of the shuttle 
depends on whether there is or is not a hole in a given position on one of 
the cardboards that hang in festoons above the loom. 

There are usually from 600 to 1,280 spaces for holes on the 

55 



Jacquard Weaving 




Jacquard Loom at Work 

■Weaving Brocade 
Cheney Brothers' Factory 



THE STORY OF SILK 

Jacquard card or as many as the number of 
lashes or the threads in a repeat of the pat- 
tern. More warp threads may be handled 
by joining two or three cords before they 
pass through the card. This doubles or 
triples the pattern in one width of the goods. 
There are as many Jacquard cards in the 
set as there are threads of the filling required 
before the pattern is completed. To repeat 
the pattern lengthwise, the endless chain of 
cards looped above the loom, is simply run 
over and over. The designs to be trans- 
ferred to the Jacquard cards are on paper 
ruled into small squares, each of which represents a thread, and the cards 
are punched by a machine, directed by hand, in accordance with this 
pattern. 

The most striking difference between ribbon and broad- 
^bon and Necktie g^^^g weaving is that, because of their narrowness, 
from 20 to 30 ribbons may be woven on the same loom 
at once. Each ribbon has, however, its own shuttle, but, instead of being 
more than a foot long, as in the case of broadgoods, it is only five or six 
inches long. It is carried by a rack and pinion, back and forth, practically 
in plain sight, from one side of the narrow warp to the other. 

The same principles are applied to ribbon as to broadgoods weaving, 
but the warp and cloth beams are only large spools, while the shuttle 
seems diminutive in comparison. 

The weaving of tubular neckties gives much the same general im- 
pression as that of ribbon, but with a few unique exceptions. 

The tie is woven smaller in the neck by having the reed narrower at 
the bottom than at the top and weaving the neck through the narrow 
part. The neck is also made softer with fewer picks of the shuttle per 
inch. 

Probably the most remarkable product of necktie weaving is the 
Cheney tubular tie. This is a tie woven in a complete tube, without a 
seam. It may be worn either side front, or turned inside out, and again 
exhibited either face to the world. 

Ties are also knitted on machines which regulate the different 
designs by a pattern wheel. Others are cut out of broad silk and sewed. 

56 




See page 56 Ribbon Loom Weaving Neckties — Cheney Brothers' Factory 

57 



THE STORY OF SILK 




Velvet Weaving and 
Finishing 



Designing Room for Silk to be 'Woven 

on Jacquard Looms 

Cheney Brothers' Factorj' 



Cheney Brothers are the 

largest manufacturers of 

velvets in the United 

States. Their velvets are made in almost 

five hundred different colors and shades. 

Velvets were formerly woven over 
wires in such a way that on the face of the 
cloth loops were formed, which could be 
cut open by hand to make the pile. They 
are now woven with two pieces, face to face, 
with the pile threads runniijig up and down 
between them. As fast as woven a sharp 
knife travels back and forth between the 
two pieces cutting the pile threads in the center so as to leave the ends 
standing up straight for the pile. > 

If the dyeing has already been done in the yarn, the velvets are sent, 
after weaving, to the shearing room. Here they are run over the large 
revolving cylinders of machines which clean them, and pull up, and care- 
fully shear, or even off, the pile. , 

In the sizing room it is stretched to uniform width on a tentering 
frame, sized or starched, and ironed on the back. In the finishing room, 
the velvet is measured on a cylinder with a length indicator, split into two 
widths, put through another brushing machine, dried if necessary, and 
softened in a breaking machine. For shipping, panne velvet is rolled up, 
plain velvet is folded, and both are stitched to prevent slipping and 
wrinkling. 

In the wet finishing room, chiffon vel- 
vets are wet sprayed, run through a carder 
to pick up the pile, cleaned on a brushing 
frame, dried in a great heat box, again 
atomized, recarded, dried, steamed and dried 
again. 

One of the most striking impressions 
about silk manufacture, is the very multi- 
plicity of processes which a piece of goods 
must undergo after weaving before it is 
ready to lay on the counter. A piece may 
be run over as many as one hundred and 

58 




Machine Printing 
Cheney Brothers' Factory 



THE STORY OF SILK 

fifty times in various processes after it comes from the loom before ready 
for shipment. 

One large class of silk goods is not dyed until after weaving. 
Piece Dyeing g^^^ goods are usually woven with the gum still in the silk, 
and as a preparation for dyeing must be boiled from 20 minutes to two 
hours in olive soap and water. After the gum is out, they are rinsed by 
being run over rollers through the many boxes of a big washing machine, 
and dried over a hot cylinder or in an extractor. 

The dyeing may be done by hand in large barks or vats filled with 
dye, or by being run over large reels which carry the goods from one bark 
to another. 

„ . . Many varieties of silk goods are now machine printed. The color 
laboratory has on hand several thousand samples of probably a 
thousand different shades which it has tested for dyeing and printing. 

The designs are sketched on white paper, then enlarged, traced on 
zinc, and cut in by hand. A paiitograph then transfers all of the design 
that is in one color, in the proper size, upon a copper cylinder, into which 
it is etched by a solution of acid. 

Each color requires a separate cylinder, and the set of cylinders must 
be exactly the same size. 

The cylinders are placed on the printing machine, which supplies the 
etched parts with color thickened with gum, scrapes the extra color 
entirely off the cylinder, except where etched, by a very true knife blade, 
and prints the goods as it revolves. 

After printing, the goods are steamed in a steam box to set their 
color, then heated with dry heat to age it. In order to take out the gum 
used to thicken the color, they are well washed. If necessary the color is 
touched up. 

Like other goods, printed silks must be put through a numerous 
ing ygj.jg|.y, q£ finishing processes. 

To stretch the piece to a uniform width, a great so-called tenter 
catches the cloth between clamps and carries it along through steam heat 
perhaps a hundred feet. The silk may be stiffened with sizing as it is run 
through rollers, pressed out and dried on a calender, and expanded on a 
barrel spreader to take out the wrinkles. It may be run through gas flames 
to singe off any loose fuz, or through machines for embossing or watering. 

Very delicate material is wound in paper, heated over hot cylinders 
and left for a day until the paper cools. Other goods, after being folded 

59 



THE STORY OF SILK 

between heavy paper, are, like satin, put under a hot pressure of several 
thousand pounds and left over night until cool. 

A serious objection to piece dyed and printed goods used to be their 
liability to spot with water. In the case of the Cheney goods, this has 
been eliminated by the invention of the Cheney shower-proof silks, the 
process for which prevents rain-spotting while retaining absolutely the 
strength and feel of the goods. 

A p • th St Here the history of silk pauses, — not ends. It began 
ages ago with a humble worm in far eastern China, 
and has reached its climax on this Western Hemisphere in the greatest 
silk mills in the world. 

But this is only a pause in the story: its sequel is embodied in the 
wonderful fabrics into which silk is wrought ; in their brilliancy, elegance 
and lightness, — and the pleasure and comfort they assure. 



60 



INDEX 



Blight of 1844, 37 

Cheney business changes name, 40, 42 
Cheney silk mills. Beginnings of, 38 
Employees of, 43 
Extent of, 43, 48 
Investment in, 48 
Surroundings of, 47, 48 
world's largest, 45 
Chiffon, 51 

Chrysalis changing to moth, 12 
Cleaning silk, 46, 48, 49, 50 
Cocoons, Preserving, ancient China, 12 
Preserving, modern methods, 46 
Spinning, ancient China, 11 
Cold storage method of preserving 

eggs, 45 
Controlling room, 49 
"Count" of yarn, 47 
Crepe, 51 

" Patent for weaving silk, 28 
Culture of silk, ancient Chinese cus- 
toms, 7 
First known, 7 
introduced into Africa, 24 
" Asia, 23 
" Connecticut, 34 
" France, 26 
" " Georgia, 33 

" India, 22 
" Italy, 24 
" Japan, 22 
" " Pennsylvania, 35 

" Persia, 23 
" Roman Empire of 
East, 23 
'*' " Sicily, 24 

" South Carolina, 34 
" Virginia, 33 
Present-day, inadvisable in U. S., 37 
" in foreign countries, 
44, 45 



Doubling, Modern method of, 50 
Doubling frame patented, 29 
Dressing mill, 48 
Dyeing, Piece, 59 

Piece and yarn, difference, 51 

skeins, ancient China, 16 
" modern methods, 52 

Earliest known culture of silk, 7 
Edict of Nantes, Revocation of, drives 

workers from France, 27 
Eggs, Care of, ancient China, 9 
Hatching, ancient China, 9 
" by incubator, 45 

preserved by cold storage, 45 
Weighing, ancient China, 9 
Embroidery silk, 51 

Finishing printed silks, 59 

velvets, 58 
Floss silk, 51 
Casing room, 49 

Gum, Removing, ancient China, 15 
Removing, from reeled silk, 52 
" " waste silk, 48 

" " woven silk, 59 

Importation of silk into ancient Eu- 
rope, 21 
Cost of early importations, 21 

Jacquard loom, 29, 30, 55, 56 
Loom, Draw, invented in East, 25 

Draw, introduced into West, 25 

Jacquard, 29, 30, 55, 56 

Power, invented, 29 
Manufacture of silk. Beginning of, in 
England, 28 

Beginning of, in France, 26 

early attempts in U. S., 38 

Present day, in U. S., 37, 44 
Morus multicaulis tree speculation, 35, 
36 



6i 



INDEX 



Mulberry trees, ancient Chinese, 8 

First French nursery of white, 26 
Mule, Crompton's, 29 
Neckties, Weaving of, 56 
Numbering of spun silk, 51 
Origin of silk a mystery, 22 

Solved, 23 
Plush weaving, 42 
Printed silks, Finishing, 59 
Printing, ancient China, 16 

modern methods, 59 

Plate, invented, 29 

resist system, 30 

Roller, invented, 29 
Raw silk, amount consumed in manu- 
facture, 44 

amount exported, 44 

" used annually by Cheney 
mills, 48 

number of cocoons required per 
pound, 47 

value per pound, 46 
Reel, Grant, 42, 49 
Reeled and spun silk, difference, 14 
Reeling, ancient China, 13 

modern methods, 46 
Ribbon making, 41, 56 
Roller, Rixford, 39 
Satin, 55 

Sewing machine. Silk for, 40, 51 
Sewing silk, first Cheney efforts, 39 

First machine for making, 39 

Modern, 51 

Value of, in 1844, 39 
Shearing room, 58 
Shuttle, Flying, patented, 29 
Sizing room, 58 
Spencer repeating carbine, 41 
Spindles, Number of, in Cheney mills, 

50 
Spinning, ancient China, 14 

Roller, machine patented, 29 



Spinning jenny, Hargreave's, pat- 
ented, 29 

Spooling machine, 40 

Spun and reeled silk, difference, 14 

Stocking machine. Ribbed, patented, 
29 

Stockings, First silk, in England, 28 

Taffeta, 55 

Tariff on silk goods, 41, 42, 44 
Throwing mill. First great, in Eng- 
land, 28 

First successful, in Italy, 25 
Twisting, ancient China, 14 

Bevel wheel for, patented, 30 

modern methods, 46, 50 

Velvet, Cheney Bros., largest manu- 
facturers, 58 
Finishing, 58 
Weaving, 30, 42, 58 

Wages, Cheney mills, 39, 41 
China, 37 
Italy, 46 
Japan, 37, 46 
Warp, Device for controlling, pat- 
ented, 28 
Modern methods of making, 51, 54, 
55 
Waste silk, Cheney machine for spin- 
ning, 40 
Patent for carding and spinning, 28 
Spinning, 49 
Value of, per pound, 47 
Water, Removing, from dyed yarn, 52 
Weaving, ancient China, 15 

See also "warp" and "woof" 
Woof, Modern methods of making, 

5U 55 
Worms, Best present-day, 45 
Microscopic examination of, 46 
Raising, in ancient China, 9, 10, 11 
" Italy, 37 



62 



INDEX OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Cheney Brothers' factory, 32, 42 

Cheney mill. Original, 33 

Cocoons^illing, by steaming — medi- 
aeval Xhina, 7 
Pierced, arriving at Cheney factory, 

48 
Preserving, by salting — ancient 
China, 11 

Designing room — Cheney factory, 58 

Drawing frame — Cheney factory, 49 

Drawing machines — Cheney factory, 
53 

Dyeing cloth, Vats for — Cheney fac- 
tory, 52 
skeins — mediaeval China, 17 

Eggs of silk worms. Delivering, to 
Justinian, 20 

Evolution of worm to moth, opp. 45 

Filature— Italy, 24 

Flag from dressing machine — Cheney 
factory, 48 

Frisons after washing — Cheney fac- 
tory, 40 

Jacquard, Joseph Marie, 30 

Leaves, Gathering mulberry — ancient 
China, 8 
Japan, 45 

Loom, Jacquard — Cheney factory, 56 
Ribbon, weaving neckties — Cheney 
factory, 57 



Machine — Cheney factory, 



Printing, 
58 

Quilling — Cheney factory, 55 

Reeling — ancient China, 12 
Colonial Virginia, 34 
Japan, 46 

Spinner, High speed — Cheney factory, 

51 
Spinning — ancient Egypt, 14 
Cheney factory, 49 

Twister, Mechanical — Cheney fac- 
tory, 54 

Warp, Beaming off — Cheney factory, 
53 

Putting, on roller — France, 26 
Weaving — ancient China, 16 

ancient Egypt, 14 

mediaeval China, 13, 17 
Weaving room — Cheney factory, 57 
Weighing raw silk — Japan, 47 
Winding spools — mediaeval China, 15 

France, 27 
Winding thread — Cheney factory, 50 
Worms, Feeding young — ancient 
China, 10 

Japan, 45 
Worms on mulberry leaves, 37 



63 



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